


much wisdom is much grief

by celestialbisexual



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers, Post HtN, Unreliable Narrator, brief mention of mercymorn/john/augustine, like not a massive amount but I don't trust him and neither should you, like so many spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25743550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestialbisexual/pseuds/celestialbisexual
Summary: After everything, God grieves, and thinks, and plans.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 67





	much wisdom is much grief

**Author's Note:**

> The alternative title for this is "Local Bastard God Mourns People He Fucking Killed, then Compartmentalizes".
> 
> Also wow harrow the ninth fucked me up but in the best way, and once I have even a rudimentary grasp on how the human body functions I'd love to write something from mercy's perspective, bc I loved her so much. 
> 
> Title is from Ecclesiastes

John waits until Ianthe is asleep before allowing the rage that’s been catching in the back of his throat since Mercy slid her hands into him and peeled him apart to course through him. He shakes with it, wishes desperately for something or someone to rip apart, and his gaze lands on Ianthe’s gleaming golden arm, and he contemplates tearing it off of her and reducing it to nothing, atomizing all of Augustine’s ridiculous, overdramatic, gold plated bullshit until there’s nothing left of it, just like there’s nothing left of him. 

Except.

Except there is nothing left of him. And with the destruction of the ship, there is precious little left in the world that Augustine has touched. Even his own body was rebuilt after Mercy destroyed it. The version of John that had touched Augustine, held him and sparred with him and kissed him and Mercymorn both no longer existed. 

That thought was enough to drain the worst of John’s rage, and he slipped out of Ianthe’s room and returned to his own quarters. 

Once he was there he made a cup of tea, black with two sugars, set it very neatly down on his desk, and then knelt in the center of the room and screamed. 

It wasn’t anything like a proper eulogy, but that would come later, with Ianthe, after he’d had time to process the sheer magnitude of their collective betrayal, and their collective loss. 

Once he’d run out of the air that he didn’t, strictly speaking, need, he pushed himself upright and filed the rest of his Augustine and Mercymorn feelings away in a box labeled “Future John Problems”. The box was, at the moment, rather fuller than he would like, but the fantastic thing about time was that Future John did not, technically, exist, because he’d never cracked time travel and was thus always living in the present.

That settled, he picked up his tea and sat back at his desk, and allowed himself to think about the future. 

Things weren’t exactly going to plan, but not all of the surprises of the night had been terrible. For example, kids! He had those now. 

Well, technically just the one, but he’d basically been considering Harrowhark his child already, and apparently his actual child’s soul had taken up residence inside of her body through some perversion of the Lyctoral process he was going to need one or both of them to explain to him when he found them again which was. Complicated. But not necessarily bad. 

It was going to be difficult getting Gideon out of Harrow without killing either of them, but John was fairly confident that he could work something out. He was God after all, that had to count for something. 

And then they would be together, like one big happy family. He had a sense, vaguely, that Ianthe might be less thrilled about that idea than he was, and made a mental note to make sure that he got her a gift for when he brought Gideon and Harrow back, so that she didn’t get too jealous. He’d also have to figure out if Gideon Prime was alive, and assuming that he was both alive and not a traitor he’d have him back too, and that would be wonderful. 

They would kill the Resurrection Beasts, and win the war, and the tomb would stay closed and everything and everyone he’d sacrificed would be worth it. It had to be worth it. There were no other options. 

He was the King Undying, The Necrolord Prime, The Blessed Resurrector, and the Emperor of the Nine Houses. He was fucking God. He would not lose. 


End file.
